A treasure turns into a terror in SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman. While playing fetch one day with his pet snail Gary, SpongeBob stumbles upon a suspicious-looking treasure chest. Ignoring the warning signs covering its surface, SpongeBob opens the chest, only to discover he has released the imprisoned Flying Dutchman! The Dutchman is furious that he was disturbed, and now wants to make SpongeBob and his friends part of his ghostly crew. As you help SpongeBob stop the Dutchman from wreaking havoc in Bikini Bottom, you change costumes, collect gold coins, and interact with all your favorite characters from the TV show in an underwater adventure full of nautical nonsense that has Spongebob searching for lost treasure.

Emulation Information

Subtitles

Subtitles, as well as the text for many sub-menus e.g. the Costume changing tents require Fast Depth Calculation to be enabled in order for them to appear on-screen. This setting is on by default.

Problems

Hang on Licensed by Nintendo

The game goes through massive slowdown on its initial "Licensed by Nintendo" screen unless the "Skip EFB Access from CPU" hack is enabled. Without it, loading times upwards of 10 minutes can be experienced before getting in-game, however once in-game without the hack a savestate can be created to bypass the long loading times. See issue 8110. This has been fixed in 5.0-9735 and 5.0-9638.

Black Menu

When using Skip EFB Access, a black screen is shown after the Big Sky logo rather than the menu. Pressing the A button on the controller will start the game. Skip EFB Access is not needed after 5.0-9735 and 5.0-9638.

Enhancements

16:9 Widescreen Gecko Code

NA

$16:9 Widescreen
04377FA8 3FE38E39

Configuration

This title does not need non-default settings to run properly.

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

Compatibility can be assumed to align with the indicated revisions. However, compatibility may extend to prior revisions or compatibility gaps may exist within ranges indicated as compatible due to limited testing. Please update as appropriate.

Only starts with Skip EFB Access from CPU, otherwise crashes on a 7x10 box of pixels before intro cutscene. Needs Real XFB to display cutscenes. Playable, but can slow down to 80% in outdoor areas. Able to beat the first few zones without issue. No noticeable graphical errors.

Licensed by Nintendo screen now displays instead of being a bunch of giant pixels thanks to 4.0-4603, but in order to even see it you have to turn off Skip EFB Access from CPU which causes extreme load times, upwards of 10 minutes. With the hack enabled this loading screen is somehow bypassed and the game boots quickly as normally expected. Using Skip EFB Access, after the Big Sky logo the screen goes black apparently infinitely, but mashing start lets the game continue. Plays the same as 4.0-4368 except maybe a bit faster.

Running in OpenGL with Antialiasing: None, Anistropic Filtering: 1x, and Internal: Auto (Multiple of 640x528). For hacks I had to disable Skip EFB Access from CPU in order to get past the Sky logo. But otherwise runs 30-60FPS. Almost perfect, but there's still some stuttering.

Finished half the game, running in Vulkan (experimental) with Antialiasing: None, Anistropic Filtering: 1x, and Internal: 3x Native (1920x1584) for 1080p. But otherwise almost 60FPS the entire time. Pretty much perfect, just some minor graphical glitches, like Bubbles on Main Menu flickering and lights showing textures incorrectly, but nothing distracting, and i found that playing in Vulkan increases framerate and decreases stutter alot more. I did test OpenGL performance on Windows and it seems the most stable option, but framerate and stutter is very inconsistent. If you're on Windows, i suggest using Vulkan, as it's worth the very minor graphical glitches, just be in mind it's still experimental (at the time of writing this).

Finished the other half the game, running in OpenGL on Mac OS X, using the same settings as explained above, it seems that OpenGL stutters alot less on Mac OS X than it does on Windows, the game is very playable on both platforms.

The initial loading for the game is still really slow, but now it runs at 7-12% speed instead of 0-1%. It finishes in around 50 seconds (over 10x faster than before when it took 10 minutes) so it's just fine, no need for Skip EFB Access anymore. Everywhere else the game runs full speed. There's some screen tearing, probably fixed by V-Sync but I didn't try it. Since the loading screen is manageable and just slowdown, and screen tearing doesn't normally affect rating as far as I know, this game is perfect. Played up to meeting Patrick delivering food downtown.